Death Defiant
by LadySilver
Summary: When newly Immortal Jackson becomes the target of a mysterious killer, he's forced to turn to Scott for help.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is a followup to the vignette posted in the _"X, or Crossovers that I'm Not Going to Write" _series. (Yes, I realize that now makes me a liar. Sucks, don't it?). As always, comments and constructive criticism are welcomed._

**Death Defiant**

by LadySilver

Being murdered three times in as many days was really starting to piss Jackson off.

On Saturday night (technically Sunday morning, but who was keeping track?), he'd been driving home from a party, slightly drunk, but not worried. Since he'd come into his Immortality, his metabolism tolerated a lot more alcohol before his reflexes and inhibitions started to suffer. And he sobered up a lot faster. He figured that even if he were pulled over, he'd be sober before the cop could reach for his Breathalizer. Out of nowhere, another car came up behind his, headlights on bright. He tilted the rearview mirror down to cut the glare from shining in his eyes, pushed harder on the accelerator. The Porsche gained some distance, then lost it again as the other car also sped up. It crept closer to his bumper, ever closer, then dropped back. The game was repeated several times. In frustration, Jackson jerked the steering wheel and yanked the car over to the shoulder with a squeal of tires. Slamming to a stop, he stepped out of the car, middle finger raised, to confront the other driver. Gravel crunched under his feet. The humidity of the night was a surprise after the comfort of the cool, dry air conditioning in the car.

The other car sped on past, an extra rev of its engine serving as its own middle finger. A smaller car that had been driving much farther back—its white color standing out in the darkness-also pulled off the road. Probably a good Samaritan who thought he had car trouble. Jackson reached to his back pocket for his phone. As much as he didn't want to call the police, enough crap had gone down in his life recently to make him aware that sometimes they could help. (When they weren't nosily getting in people's way). The night was extra dark out here with no street lights or house lights, far enough from the town that its ambient light didn't spill over. A few stars peppered the sky, and the tip of the half moon poked up over the tree line to his left. The glare of the headlights in front of him reduced the strip of roadside on which he sat to a tunnel. The trees swayed in arms of shadow next to him. Jackson made a visor over his eyes, squinted toward the white car. He could see was a dark figure emerge from the vehicle. "Hello?" he called. Should he walk toward them or not? In response to his call, a flat crack shattered the air. He felt a sudden hot pressure encompass his chest like a vise grip.

Then he was waking up by the side of the road with a gasp of air rushing into lungs that felt like they'd forgotten how to be used. The sky was starting to lighten, a pale pink infusing the horizon. Racking coughs consumed him as he tried to convince his lungs to work. Not until the coughing started to calm did he realize what had happened. His shirt was a bloody mess, the blood still wet, though starting to dry and turn brown. A tiny hole was burned through the fabric over his heart. He shuddered, yet was unable to stop himself from sticking a finger through that hole in morbid curiosity. The last time—the first time—he'd died, he didn't know what happened. He had expected to suffer a werewolf bite, go to sleep, and wake up with it gone. When that happened, it never occurred to him that the plan hadn't worked—until that upstart doctor walked into his parents' house and informed him otherwise.

Derek's bite had kick-started a latent Immortality, a potential with which he had been born but that required a violent death to initiate. Now injuries healed in seconds, without scarring. Death… well, death could take a little longer to heal—anywhere from minutes to hours. He couldn't get sick, his organs would never wear out, he'd never have to worry about high blood pressure or cholesterol. He'd never age. That had to be the best news. He would always be at the peak of his physical perfection. As thrilled as he had been to learn these rules, all that concerned him right now was the fact that he had just been murdered in cold blood.

He rolled into a crouch, running a quick test of his limbs. Everything appeared to be in working order. Except that he'd just come back from the dead and that had to be the worst sensation he'd ever experienced, like vertigo and pain and a crash of sensory overload all crammed into one never-ending moment. His lungs burned from the shock of their reuse. The driver's side door to his Porsche still hung open. The interior light was on. A beeping informed him that the door had been open for some time. He glanced around, searching for signs of the other car, the shooter. Besides a spray of gravel from where the car had pulled over, he couldn't see one. The person had shot him, killed him, and left. They'd left him, his car … he slapped his hand over his back pockets, felt the familiar bulges of his wallet and phone. What the hell? To the raucous chirps and tweets of birds awakening in the forest preserve that surrounded him, he climbed back into his car and continued the drive home—bloody shirt shoved under the front seat so he wouldn't have to feel it rubbing against his skin, reminding him.

Sunday afternoon he escaped from his parents' scrutiny and went driving through the industrial district. Sundays were the best for this, as most of the factories closed for the day, leaving their parking lots empty and unmonitored. Without even a latent fear of being injured in a car wreck, he could really open up with the Porsche and play with its capabilities. He finally understood the full meaning of luxury sports car. It was a glorious afternoon—until he felt the back right tire blow out, the car skidding in an abrupt loss of control. When he got out to assess the damage, he was shot from behind. He never saw the person who did it.

On Monday he was murdered in his garage before school. He woke up in a pool of blood on the garage floor. Another shirt was ruined, and he was twenty minutes late for first period. Yet again, he'd been shot in the chest.

Pleading the excuse of oversleeping (because what he supposed to tell the idiot of an office assistant, that he'd been too _dead_ to come to school?), he finally was able to claim a late pass—just in time for the passing bell to ring. He pushed his way through the sudden throng of people to his locker, more annoyed than ever at their refusal to get out of his way.

Though he didn't show it except in the clench of his jaw, inside he was shaking with rage at the injustice of the last couple days. Adams had explained the rules of The Game to him, and he intellectually got that others would be coming to challenge him in a dual to the death. With swords, of all things. Immortals could only be permanently killed via decapitation, so they had some kind of obligation to go around trying to cut each other's heads off. He was sure he was missing nuances since, really, the whole thing was so ridiculous that how _could_ anyone be expected to believe it? But being shot in cold blood didn't seem like a challenge, not the way Adams had spoken of them. It seemed like a power play—especially since the killer clearly knew where he lived, where he went, what his schedule was, and couldn't be bothered to reveal himself. Whatever the killer wanted, it didn't seem to be Jackson's head. And Jackson wasn't being given a chance to fight back.

A prickle on the back of his neck made him turn. Scott was standing a few lockers down, staring at him with an odd expression on his face. Stiles stood next to him, one hand on Scott's shoulder. "What are you looking at?" Jackson demanded.

Scott tipped his nose up, nostrils flared. "You smell like blood," he said, drawing closer. At least he had the sense to keep his voice down.

"What about it?" Jackson demanded. He had to resist the urge to touch his chest where the bullets had entered. He'd changed his shirt-he'd gone through a lot of shirts this weekend—but, he didn't have the time to take a second shower this morning. A quick pass with a handful of paper towels had been enough. So he'd thought.

"You smell like_ a lot_ of blood." Scott swallowed hard, his Adam's apple visibly moving. The set of his face took on a feral cast.

"Come on, Scott," Stiles said, off a double-take at his friend. "We're going to be late for class." He tried to steer Scott back into the press of students; Scott shrugged his hand off, continued to sniff in Jackson's direction.

"The fact that half the kids in this school menstruate must be a hoot and half for you, McCall," Jackson taunted. He yanked a random book from his locker and slammed the door shut. "Why don't you take your freak out on them?" He turned and escaped toward his class before Scott could respond, grateful that the class was one he didn't share with the werewolf.

He stayed as far away from McCall as he could that day, though it turned out to be a lot of more difficult than he'd thought. He'd never realized how many classes they had together, how many times they passed each other in the hallway. To make things worse—as if they could get worse—Jackson's phone seemed to be broken. No matter how often he checked it, no messages waited. He'd texted Adams a half dozen times. What kind of mentor was he? Couldn't the good doctor be bothered to check his messages? What could he possibly be doing that was more important? Jackson had even tried calling his father's offices directly, but was told that Adams wasn't available. Jackson grunted in frustration at the newest message-less screen that greeted him.

"Got a hot date waiting for your attention?" Coach Finstock snapped. He yanked Jackson's phone out of his hand and peered at the screen, no doubt expecting there to be a juicy text message he could read aloud to the class. A flash of disappointment crossed his face at seeing nothing more exciting than the time. He recovered quickly. "I'll just hang on to this," he said, still holding it aloft so that everyone could see what he'd confiscated. "You can pick it up after your parents give their OK." He strode back to the front of the room and tossed the cell phone onto his desk. "What do you say we all pretend we're here to learn about economics?" he challenged the room.

Jackson narrowed his eyes in fury, but bit back what he wanted to say. The loss of the phone was annoying, but he could get it back after school. Finstock's threat was toothless—unless the coach was pushed too far. Then Jackson would hear about it at practice.

He didn't hear a word Finstock said for the rest of class. Jackson couldn't tear his gaze off the phone. At any second it would jump and start vibrating across the desk, Adams finally getting off his ass and returning the messages.

Except—maybe he didn't know either. Maybe that's why he wasn't calling back. Adams and Jackson had only spoken a handful of times since that evening at the Whittemores, and while Adams had said he would be training Jackson, he hadn't done much. He certainly hadn't bothered to start teaching Jackson how to use a sword.

Or maybe it was a test.

Jackson nodded in sudden certainty at his conclusion. Adams was testing him. Could Adams be the mystery shooter? Is that why Jackson hadn't been able to see the guy? Why the shooter had left so quickly? The phone continued to sit amongst the papers, silent. Yeah, this was a test—that's why Adams was ignoring his calls—

-and Jackson knew exactly how to go about passing it. His "mentor" might think he was clever, but Jackson had a few tricks up his sleeve, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Jackson caught Scott in the locker room while they were suiting up. He strolled up and dropped back against the locker, crossing his arms low on his chest like he had nothing better to do than stand right there. "Here's the thing," he began, voice low and casual, talking more to the space in front of him than to the werewolf next to him. "As much as it pains me to say this: I need your help."

The glove Scott had been putting on dropped to the floor with a thump. He bent down slowly to pick it up, eyes never leaving Jackson. "What?"

"I need your help." Jackson shrugged, as if he was asking for—well, since there was nothing minor that Jackson _could_ be requesting help with (he had the money, grades, and car and McCall did not), they both knew the shrug was a sham.

Scott glanced around the locker room, no doubt looking for the person Jackson meant to be speaking to. "To do what?" he asked, still in the crouch, hand wrapped around the glove.

Dropping to a whisper—secure in the knowledge that Scott would be the only one who could hear—he said, "To find the person who's trying to kill me." A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth from what he wasn't saying. Scott's chest expanded with a huge intake of air, the precursor of an answer, perhaps, but definitely the sign of the hook sinking in. Jackson pushed off the locker with one foot, leaving before this could turn into a discussion that _he_, at least, knew better than to have a public place. As he returned to his locker, he added under his breath, "Meet me at my car after practice."

He knew Scott would show up. The guy had a disgustingly large hero complex and the lack of good sense about when to use it. Jackson was amazed that a person with so little self-preservation instinct could have survived this long as a person, much less as a werewolf. After he'd changed into his street clothes, Jackson went to collect his phone. Finstock gleefully reminded him that it would not be returned until after Jackson's parents signed off on doing so. Jackson turned on his heel and left, not in the mood for arguing. Anybody who wielded the power of assigning wind sprints was not a person to be messed with. Jackson's new immortality protected him from dying; it didn't prevent him from wishing he would. He was still sore from today's workout, despite his body's incredible healing powers.

By the time he got out to the parking lot, Scott was already there, and he was _leaning_ on the passenger door of Jackson's car. Didn't he care about scratching the paint? His arms dangled uncomfortably at his sides and his backpack sat on the asphalt at his feet like he had dumped it there. To Jackson's mild surprise, Stiles was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's your Master?" Jackson snarked as he approached.

Scott's face screwed up in bafflement. "My m-master?" He scratched his head like he'd heard the word someplace before but couldn't place it.

Jackson rolled his eyes. "Stiles!"

"Oh!" Scott's eyes widened, then immediately collapsed back into confusion. "Why would you call him my—"

"Never mind," Jackson replied, cutting him off. Jokes that had to be explained weren't funny. He'd assumed Scott would be more sensitive to dog jokes. And it didn't really matter where Stiles was, just as long as he wasn't here. Not only did the car not have room for three people, Jackson didn't want to deal with the both of the boys. They got so much more obnoxious and stupid together. "Just get in the car." He thumbed the button on the button on the key fob and the doors unlocked with an audible click.

Jackson had parked in the spot closest to the main doors, as he always did. Everyone at the school knew that that spot belonged to him; if they didn't, they learned quickly enough. He saw Scott's bike still locked up in the bike rack next to the car, but didn't offer to take it with them. Besides the fact that there was no room anywhere in the car for storing a bicycle, he would never allow anything that juvenile into his car. He threw his own backpack into the back of the car.

A few minutes later they finally pulled out of the parking lot. Even at this time of day, the exit queue was backed up. Besides the lacrosse practice, so many of the other after school activities adjourned at the same time that school hours might as well be officially extended. Jackson relaxed when he turned on to the main road. The school parking lot was too unpredictable, too many un- or barely-licensed drivers bumbling their way around with cars that barely worked in the best of times. At least on the road, Jackson could better rely on his own driving skills to keep the car safe.

The site where Jackson had first been murdered was several miles outside of town. Finding it in the afternoon when the sun hit the trees from a different angle and the shadows played on the ground in deceptive ways took all his concentration, even though he couldn't imagine how the place wouldn't be permanently embedded in his memory. He drove much slower than he normally would, scanning the gravel and underbrush along the shoulder for evidence. Since it hadn't even been two days, and no rain had come through, he figured the spot would be easy to find.

Except, he kept passing spots of violence. The first time was a giant bloodstain that turned out to belong to a deer. The carcass's hooves were visible, sticking up out of the ditch about twenty feet from the road. Flies buzzed around the legs. A little further down, he spotted the black swerves of fresh skid marks leading into the gravel. The scene felt wrong, something about the positioning of the trees or the density of the weeds, so he kept driving. A little later, he saw the remains of a small animal, possibly a squirrel, smeared across the road.

Scott sat stiffly in the passenger seat, hands clenched against his jean-clad legs. He hadn't spoken since they left the school's parking lot. As they passed the mile marker Jackson had noted while driving home, he finally broke the silence with: "What are we doing out here?"

Jackson eased the car onto the shoulder, attentive this time both to the possibility of accidentally destroying the evidence he needed and to blowing another tire—though he knew the blowout hadn't been accidental. He couldn't prove that his tire had been shot, but considering everything else, it seemed obvious. Still, he had neither a spare nor a cell phone with him and it was a long walk back to town.

A slight breeze ruffled his hair as he stepped out of the car. It carried the crisp scent of new foliage from the forest around them with the bitter aftertaste of exhaust fumes from the road. He sniffed the breeze, curious for once as to what other information it might carry. Would Scott be able to pick up more? Or had the breeze carried it all away. "Someone took a shot at me," he explained to Scott who had exited the car and was now peering into the ditch as if it held sparkling mysteries. The Queen Anne's Lace that fringed the edge of the shoulder bowed and waved.

"A shot?"

Jackson mimed a gun with his fingers, pulled the trigger of his thumb. "Bang."

Scott gave a startled shake, turned a slow circle as if suspecting that the shooter was still lurking in the woods. When he looked at Jackson, his eyes glowed amber and Jackson had to stop himself from taking a defensive step back. Most of the time Scott looked so innocent, his eyes dark brown and so big in his face, his head often tilted to the side as if he was in perpetual awe of the world and the people within it. This was not the same person.

"He's gone now," Jackson said, letting a tinge of exasperation cover his surprise. "I didn't get a good look at him. I was hoping you could tell me who it was."

"Oh," Scott replied, appearing to think it over. After a moment, he started to drift down the shoulder as if already on the scent. "Where was he?"

Jackson gestured the direction Scott was heading. "Keep going," he said. He pictured the scene from the other night. Since coming into his immortality, his memory had markedly improved. Adams had explained that it was a side-effect of how their physiology worked now, related to something called the Quickening that somehow made them what they were.

As with pretty much everything else he'd explained, Adams hadn't been clear on _how_ it all worked; he just insisted that it did. "Assuming you don't lose your head before you finish living out your first life-span," he'd said, during one of the few "training" sessions the two had managed to squeeze into Jackson's schedule, "you're going to have a lot of memories. Decades, maybe centuries worth. Not just your own, either." He'd taken a swig of his beer (he consumed an astounding quantity of beer, yet never seemed to get drunk) and smiled like he'd just told a particularly impressive lie and gotten away with it. "You will survive longer if you can recognize your friends and your enemies, and keep track of which one is which. Remember everyone you meet, and remember that everyone will be your enemy eventually." That was the first inkling Jackson had gotten that Adams might be more complicated than Jackson had given him credit for.

Scott was still walking. He kept casting glances back as if expecting Jackson to call him out on being so gullible. Jackson gestured him onwards. Not only had it been dark, but he hadn't felt the shooter. Immortals could sense each other's presence, a kind of low buzzing in the backs of their heads indicating that another was near. But how close did another Immortal have to be before that sense kicked in? He hadn't thought to ask, and the information had not yet been volunteered.

"There. Stop." Jackson called when Scott appeared about the size that the shooter had. The younger boy stopped about fifty feet away. He looked a small, lone figure with the road stretching in an infinite straight line behind him. Scott shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and his nose into the air. The posture made Jackson snort and cover his mouth with his hand, vaguely embarrassed on behalf of his teammate. Scott shot him a glare, but sniffed a couple more times at the air. The breeze sprang up again, rustling through the weeds and catching the hood on the back of Scott's shirt.

A minute later, Scott trudged back, his head shaking. "There's nothing," he said, when he drew close enough. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Jackson raised an eyebrow at the addendum.

Scott shrugged. "There's a lot out here, and the breeze isn't exactly helping." He gazed off toward the woods on this side of the road, an unreadable expression on his face. "I can't make sense of it all." For a moment, Jackson thought he was going to say something else, to try to explain further or make more excuses, but then he shook his head as if clearing it. "Is that it? Is that the big favor?"


	3. Chapter 3

"Not quite," Jackson replied. The two returned to the car and Jackson headed them toward the industrial district, though he suspected that visit would also be a bust. If Scott couldn't pick up a scent in the relative middle of nowhere on a road with little traffic, he definitely wouldn't be able to get one in a parking lot that was full of cars, through which hundreds of people had walked in the last twenty-four hours. Scott was turning out to be useless. Why had he expected anything else? Jackson's hands tightened on the wheel and he pressed down harder on the accelerator.

"He hit you, didn't he? That's why you smell like blood," Scott asked when they jerked to a stop at a traffic light on the edge of town. Like the trip out, they had been driving back in silence, though this time Scott seemed more pensive than suspicious. Jackson's own thoughts had been occupied with the first edge of concern that his plan might fail.

Jackson scoffed. "Do you ever _think_, McCall. Use your head. Of course I didn't get shot. If I had gotten _shot_—"

Scott dropped his head back against the headrest. "You can't lie to me," he stated. He let his head roll so that he was looking toward Jackson, though not directly at him. His eyes were brown, but something in them made Jackson's foot slip off the brake pedal. The car lurched forward. The light turned green.

With a hard spin of the wheel, Jackson turned onto the cross street, then pressed the accelerator and dodged around the slower moving car that he had turned behind. The other driver laid on the horn. Jackson ignored it. "If anyone's a liar here, McCall, it's you." He had more he wanted to say. It still rankled him that Scott took, and continued to take, credit for athletic prowess that only existed because of his supernatural abilities. Didn't Scott realize how that made a mockery of the skills the rest of the boys had to train hard and play their asses off to earn? But Jackson was savvy enough to recognize that now was not the time for addressing these issues. As useless as Scott had been so far, Jackson had no other ideas for how to solve the mystery of the shooter.

"That's not the point," Scott fired back. Jackson grinned inside. Even though he was barely trying, he'd still pushed at least one of Scott's buttons. "You _can't_ lie to me. I can hear it when you do."

Oh. That was going to be a problem. Jackson bit his lip to hold back the response he wanted to make. While he swerved around another slow moving vehicle (didn't anyone drive the speed limit?), he turned his attention to trying to prep answers to other questions that would inevitably arise. Now that he understood the rules better on this end, he realized that his answers had to pass for the truth without giving everything away. He had no intention of giving all his secrets away.

At the last second, Jackson decided to skip the visit to the industrial district. A glance at the clock confirmed that first shift would be ending soon, which meant second shift would be coming in. No way would Scott be able to smell anything useful. Any scent left from Sunday would be obliterated by now, and maybe Scott didn't need to know how many times Jackson had been shot. Not only would that raise more questions, but Scott might just notice that Jackson still hadn't answered the first one. Still, he did need to solve this and he had Scott in the car. He drove past the turnoff for the district, took the next left, and headed toward his house.

"School's that way." Scott gestured back down the street they had been on after Jackson made another turn. "Where are we going now?"

"One more stop," Jackson said.

"Why?"

Jackson hesitated, just long enough to do an unnecessary check of all his mirrors. "Because it's happened more than once," he conceded. He could feel Scott staring at him, Scott's surprise and suspicion boring into him as if to mine his thoughts. Werewolves didn't _have_ mindreading powers, did they? No, he was pretty sure they didn't. Almost absolutely sure.

"Jackson—" Scott's voice was low and controlled with an undercurrent of darker timbres. "What are you involved in?"

Jackson pursed his lips. How was he supposed to answer this? "Let's call it a game," he said after a moment. A game. Not The Game, which is what Adams had labeled the decapitation challenges. If _that_ could have such a completely inappropriate name, then so could be whatever it was that Jackson was involved in right now.

"A game?" Scott echoed. In all the time they'd been on the team together, been in school together, Jackson hadn't had a lot of sustained conversations with the younger boy. The few he'd had to suffer through gave him the impression that Scott was perpetually several mental steps behind everyone else. His actions belied that, though—and that created a paradox that discomfited Jackson. Trying to deal with Scott put him off-balance, and if there was one thing Jackson couldn't tolerate it was not being control. Scott ran a hand through his hair. "Am I part of this game?"

"No," Jackson replied. Thank god for that. Unlike lycanthropy, Immortality couldn't be caught or transmitted. A person either was or wasn't, and the vast majority of people weren't. Scott as a regular Immortal was a cringe inducing thought. Scott as a werewolf Immortal was nightmare material. Fortunately, he'd never have to worry about either.

"Then what am I doing here?" Scott pressed. "Am I helping you cheat?" He sounded offended at the idea. Hypocrite.

"Not cheat." Jackson whipped the car around a corner; Scott was thrown to the side, only the restraint of the seatbelt preventing him from slamming into the car door. He'd grabbed the door handle as they turned and now clutched it with white knuckles. "Try not to break my car," Jackson ordered. "You're lucky that I'm letting you ride in it at all. Who knows where you've been."

Scott moved his hands to sit awkwardly in his lap. He curled and uncurled his fingers, as if needing to do anything with them. "The insults are just a habit, aren't they," he commented, for once not sounding like he was asking a question. "You can't help yourself."

Jackson chose to ignore him, instead offering as distraction an answer to his earlier question. "There's no cheating. The thing is, this game doesn't have rules." None that he knew of anyway, so he really wasn't lying. "You're just…" A half-smile tugged up the corner of his mouth. "… helping me win."

Some instinct compelled Jackson to park the car on the street in front of his house under the oak tree that grew in the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb, rather than pull into the garage. Normally, he would never take a risk like that, even in a neighborhood as safe as his. But, this time, it seemed wise.

Scott's questions had stopped the moment they turned into the subdivision. Jackson had waved to the guard at the gatehouse and kept going as if he owned the place, which he didn't. But his parents pretty nearly did, so that was close enough. Scott's mouth fell open when he saw the immensity of the houses. From the street that ran parallel to the subdivision, only roofs were visible. A literal wrought iron gate encircled the whole neighborhood. The row of evergreens that had been planted along it effectively hid both the gate and the homes within in from passers-by.

Once through the gate, via the only street that led in or out of the community, the neighborhood was laid open. The subdivision had been built along meandering roads that allowed for huge lots built up with McMansions. Each was meticulously landscaped, bearing a pool, and set as far from its neighbors as the lot allowed. Jackson took the sight for granted. Only when confronted with a reaction like Scott's—who was craning his neck, eyes tearing from one house to the next as if each one was worthy of his dedicated disbelief—was he reminded that not everyone did. He shrugged. Scott's reaction wasn't his concern, even if it was amusing.

Jackson took the time while parking and exiting the car to glance around, looking for places the shooter could have hidden. The shooter had to have planned the attack very carefully in order to have gotten into and out of the subdivision without being noted and to have not been seen once there, especially if he was waving a gun around. Jackson's murders obviously weren't random or spontaneous. He was being specifically targeted. Yet no one had reported a gun shot or come to his aid as he lay dead in the garage. He narrowed his eyes, assessing. The oak was too young yet, barely an arm's breadth around. No other cars were parked on the street or in driveways, so that option was out. A cluster of shrubbery along the property line of his own yard was the most likely candidate. "Can you smell anyone here?"

Scott shot him a look of disbelief. "Sure. Lots of people," he replied. "Problem is, I still don't know who I'm supposed to be trying to smell."

"Try there." He pointed at the shrubs. The bushes stood about three feet tall and were pale green with new growth. A few plants with yellow and blue flowers around their base accentuated the greenery. "With any luck, there'll only be two strong scents. One of them should be all over the yard, the other should only be there." That would be the gardener and the shooter. If he could get Scott to recognize the gardener's scent, then process of elimination meant that any other would be the shooter. They may still not know whom it belonged to, but they would at least know something. Once Scott had his scent, he should be able to follow it or recognize it if he smelled it elsewhere. At least, that's how it worked with dogs. Jokes aside, Jackson didn't know if a werewolf's abilities worked like those of a common dog. For once, he cared.

Scott crossed the yard, and walked a circuit around the shrubs, his nose gamely stuck in the air. His chest expanded and compressed with the big breaths he drew. He was either doing a great job at humoring Jackson, or he also believed that a werewolf could double as a bloodhound.

Without warning, Scott keeled over. His hands hit the ground hard. Jackson heard a crack at the impact. Was that a gunshot? Had Scott just been hit? Jackson dropped to a crouch and whipped his head around, searching for anyone out of place. At this time of day, the yards were empty, most of the people who lived in the neighborhood still being at work and all of the workers who maintained the neighborhood having gone home for the day. Then he realized he hadn't heard a gunshot.

"McCall?"

Scott was still on his knees and was crawling toward Jackson, his head down. "You bastard," he hissed. "You goddamn bastard."

Jackson rubbed the back of his neck. The wounds Derek had put there were long gone, at least physically, but he could feel them itching under the skin. "What happened?" he asked. He stood up, staying vigilant to his surroundings in case the shooter was out there, waiting for Jackson to be distracted.

Scott lunged at him, clearing half the yard without effort. The attack carried Jackson over backward. He slammed into the ground, his breath knocked out. Scott sprawled on top of him, hands on Jackson's shoulders, pinning him to the grass. The werewolf's claws cut into him, the pain sharp and fresh. Another shirt gone. At the rate he was going through them, putting shirts on at all hardly seemed worth the bother. "What the fuck, McCall," Jackson shouted. A full set of fangs snarled inches from his face. A bead of saliva hung from the upper teeth. "Get off me!" His got his hands under Scott's chest and heaved, never more grateful than now for all the time he'd been putting in on the bench press.

The full force of his effort was barely enough to dislodge Scott and send him onto the grass next to Jackson. With a fluid twist, Scott turned upright, balanced lithely on his hands and feet. His muscles bunched to leap again. Then his head popped up, eyes blazing. His attention turned toward Jackson's neighbor's yard. He paused, his hands tightening in the grass. A second later, he took off running down the street the opposite direction from where he'd been looking.

Jackson gasped for breath. His shoulders ached from the claws, though he knew the wounds had already healed. What had gotten into McCall? And how did he move like that?

Long minutes passed before he got control of his breathing. He stared up at the bright blue afternoon sky, its cloudlessness mocking his mood. Finally, he got himself together enough to sit up.

He only dimly processed the flat crack of the gunshot, and then only realized what he had heard after he saw the passenger window of his Porsche shatter. _That_ he heard and felt to the core of his being. He scrambled for what little cover he could dredge between the tree and the car and hunkered there. His heart pounded in his chest. His pulse echoed in his ears and drowned out the softer sounds of the neighborhood. He pawed at his back pocket for his phone, then remembered that it still sat on Finstock's desk.

No follow-up shot came.

Eventually, he decided to risk getting murdered again in order to be safer in the long run. He couldn't spend the rest of his life cowering in the front yard, and he definitely didn't want his parents to find him like this. With slow and careful movements, he retrieved the garage door opener from his car. Pushed the button. The door ground up, the hum of its motor a strange relief. As soon as it rose enough, he shifted into a runner's crouch. Then, pretending that this was the most important sprint of his athletic career (an easy pretense to convince himself of), he took off for the garage.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning at school, Scott body-blocked him into his locker. Jackson's shoulder slammed into the metal door with a loud crunch. He felt the metal dent under the impact, felt a giant bruise bloom on his upper arm and heal with a tingle. Jackson turned on Scott in fury, all of his emotional shocks over the past few days boiling up and spilling over. Before he had a chance to consider how unwise the action might be, his arm came around in powerful swing. The punch connected solidly with Scott's jaw. The younger boy's head rocked to the side. Anyone else would have been knocked out; Scott merely took a step back and brought his own hands up in tight fists. A low growl began to rumble from his throat.

Then Stiles and Danny were pulling them apart. The two co-captains glared at each other from opposite sides of the hallway. Each strained against their respective best friends' arms; each only half listened while their friends tried to talk them down without knowing what had them riled up to begin with.

"Let it go," Danny spoke. "Whatever it is, it's not worth it."

"Not worth it?" Jackson sputtered. "He attacked me. He tried—" He cut himself off with a loud click of his teeth. He hadn't told Danny about his Immortality, though he had thought about it and had broached the subject a couple times, almost calling him the previous night to explain everything. And Danny definitely didn't know about werewolves. Without both those pieces of information, the altercation wouldn't make any sense. Even with them, it didn't make sense. There was no way Jackson could explain it now, standing in front of his locker at school with the student body assembling into an attentive crowd on each side. He'd sound insane. His reputation would be irreparably damaged.

Stiles was whispering into Scott's ear. Jackson couldn't hear what he was saying, but it seemed to be working. The rage that had been radiating off him started to ease.

Quickly enough, the rest of the students started to figure out that the fight had been aborted. In ones and twos they peeled away, returning to their normal pre-first bell routines.

"I'm letting you go now," Stiles said to Scott. He spoke loudly enough that he must have meant Jackson to hear him. Off Scott's nod, he unlocked his arms and backed away. Scott stayed put. A moment later, Danny followed Stiles's lead.

They had reached an impasse.

Loathe as he was to admit to, Jackson was no closer to solving the mystery of his serial assassin and Scott was his best bet. The attacks were happening with alarming frequency. Someone wanted Jackson to know that he could be killed at any time, anywhere. The thing was, each time he had been killed, he'd also been permitted to resurrect. A challenger who was after his head could easily have taken it any of the three times Jackson had lain dead. That he (or she) hadn't so far meant nothing. Any time Jackson got killed could be his last. Even if the one shooting him wasn't out to behead him, some other Immortal could take advantage of the situation. He _had _put a stop to this before anyone made Jackson's death permanent.

He caught that last thought as it passed through his head. He'd been Immortal for only a few weeks. How had he become so cavalier about death so quickly? How had he become so accepting of death as a casual, recurrent event that could be shrugged off as little more than a personal inconvenience? Except for when it wasn't?

A laugh bubbled up from deep inside him. He tried to tamp it down, but the pressure built the more he fought. His legs gave out. He slid to the hallway floor, his back to the lockers, and buried his head in his knees. He couldn't stop laughing. Hands wrapped around the back of his head, palms pressed to his temples, he kept on laughing so hard that his stomach cramped. The sounds pouring from his chest curdled in his ears, made him flush with embarrassment. Nothing that ugly could be coming from him, yet he still couldn't stop them.

Someone, probably Danny, slid down to the floor next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. When he finally stopped, long after the bell for first hour had rung and the halls had cleared out, tears were rolling down his cheeks and his nose and throat were thick with snot. The knees of his jeans and the sleeves of his shirt were soaked.

"You're a mess," Danny informed him. He didn't mean the damage to his clothes.

There were things he hadn't told his best friend—yet—but that didn't mean he was about to start lying. They had never lied to each other, especially when they knew the truth would hurt. "I know," Jackson replied.

Danny eyed him, assessing the situation as only he could. He shook his head, coming to some kind of conclusion. He stood up, brushed at the front of his jeans as if the dirt from the floor had spread. "I'm here when you're ready to talk," he said. It was the best offer he could make, the only one. He contemplated Jackson a moment longer, eyes narrowed as if to pierce below the surface. He had a disquieting way of appearing to do exactly that. "Until then," he picked up, just a split second before Jackson started to squirm under the scrutiny, "You'd better make things right with Scott. I don't know what you did to piss him off, but you really pushed him too far this time."

"I didn't do anything," Jackson protested. Scott had turned on him. For no reason. Twice. It's not like Scott had to be forced into the car; he hadn't been made to do anything he hadn't agreed to. Except for some mild joking, Jackson hadn't even said anything that would warrant the attack yesterday—which he had pretty much pushed from his mind on account of what happened afterward. But then _Scott_ was the one who started the shit here at school, completely unprovoked.

"Yeah, you did," Danny replied. He helped Jackson stand up. They started toward the nearest bathroom, Jackson leading. Their tandem footsteps echoed in the empty hall. As late he already was for class, no way was he going to show up looking as red-eyed and puffy-faced as he imagined he must look after that bout of hysteria. "The thing you two have," his friend continued, "you gotta let it go. It's not good for the team."

"Not the time, Dan," Jackson sighed. He ran a hand over his face. His cheeks were still damp and his eyes felt raw and sore. The last thing on his mind right now was lacrosse, amazing as that was.

A hand on Jackson's shoulder stilled him, pulled him around so that he was facing his friend. Danny wore his concern baldly, his brow furrowed and lines etched around his heavy-lidded eyes. "I get that you have bigger problems right now. It doesn't matter that I don't know what they are. You'll solve them, probably through brute force, because that's how you do things. But, I have a feeling that you'd get more traction if you started treating Scott like your teammate instead of—" He frowned, obviously searching for the right word. _Opponent_, Jackson wanted to supply. _The opposite of _teammate_ is _opponent_._ He kept silent, not up for even that small level of fight. "A tool," Danny concluded. "He's a person, not a tool." He gave Jackson's shoulder a light squeeze, then kicked open the bathroom door with a shove of his foot, effectively cutting off any response Jackson might have been able to muster—probably for the best. "Go get yourself cleaned up. I'll meet you in class."

To his astonishment, Jackson made it through the day without further meltdown. This time, it seemed Scott was avoiding him. In chemistry, Scott got up and moved to a more distant table when Jackson sat down. At lunch, Scott took his tray out into the courtyard, Stiles protesting every step of the way about it being too cold to eat outside. They even survived practice, though the fact that Finstock put the co-captains on opposite teams of a scrimmage probably helped.

Afterward, Jackson headed to the parking lot out of habit. He found himself in front of the empty space where his car was supposed to be, momentarily confused about why it wasn't there. He blinked at the gap, shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the next. Next to him, Scott worked to free his bike from the rack. He could feel Scott casting glances his direction, while trying to pretend that he was only interested in winding the chain around the base of the bicycle's seat to keep it out of the way on the ride home. No one took that long to secure a lock, especially on a piece-of-trash bike.

His car was in the shop, he remembered. Then he remembered why, and his stomach clenched with the start of more hysteria. When his parents had discovered the busted window that morning, they had insisted on taking the car right in for repairs. The whole way, they shook their heads over the horrible act of vandalism of which they'd been victims. "What are we paying those security guards to do all day?" his father asked. The question had carried layers of meaning that touched on fears of safety and security, but that all came back to the basic idea that people like the Whittemores didn't _deserve _to have these worries. Jackson knew that as soon as his father got to work, he'd be calling the homeowners' association and the police, and demanding answers. And that would be just the beginning.

He didn't bother to tell them how the broken window really happened. Chalk up one more lie by omission to his steadily growing record. Even if they believed him (and the healing part wouldn't be difficult to prove; even they would have to believe what they saw with their own eyes), he didn't trust them with the information. In his world, what you knew about people had power. What they didn't know about you could have more. His parents had taught him well. He knew they'd be proud if they ever learned how well.

But, that didn't mean they wouldn't disown him—especially when they realized that his Immortality would forever (literally forever) function as a reminder that he was adopted. No Immortal knew his or her natural parents. And if his parents knew what he had become, they would never be able to look at him again and not be reminded of where he had come from—or, more specifically, where he hadn't—especially as they continued to age and he didn't. They would probably decide that they didn't deserve the level of problems he'd be bringing to their lives from now on. If Adams had made one thing clear, it was that the lives of Immortals were filled with violence. And people like the Whittemores didn't deserve to have those worries, either.

He squeezed his hands into tight fists and forced his lungs to work slow and steady, forced himself to breathe from the diaphragm, in through the nose and out through the mouth, until the knot in his stomach loosened.

Scott was still fiddling with the bike lock.

"Do you have something you want to say, McCall?" Jackson snapped.

Scott rose to his full, not-very-impressive height. His brown hair clung in wet curls to his head, damp from the shower after practice but giving the impression that he was sweating in fear. "Where's your car?" he asked, glancing between the empty parking space and Jackson. The question was innocuous, masquerading as small talk, but Jackson could sense something tightly coiled under it, like Scott was probing a possible landmine before stepping forward. Whatever insanity had prompted him to attack Jackson that morning had been locked down, but not put away

"It's not important," Jackson replied wearily. He shouldered his backpack and started to turn on his heel. There was no sense in dragging out the conversation, especially since neither of them really wanted to be having it. Except, a part of him did kind of want to have it. He paused half way through the turn, opening a chance for his co-captain to explain himself, when he knew, he just _knew_, that he would be smartest to keep walking.

Scott gusted out a breath. "It's just that—" he squeezed his eyes shut, and ran a hand through his hair, loosing a few drops of water to run down his face. "You'd better be right, Stiles," he murmured. Jackson started as the words sunk in, and he mentally kicked himself once more. He should have known that Scott would go to Stiles for help or advice or, more likely, to have someone tell him what to think. Making eye-contact again, the younger teen commented, "You're different." He sucked his lips back, his chin sticking out like he wanted to display his stubbornness, wanted to make sure that Jackson understood that his question wouldn't be brushed off this time. The effect was ruined by the fact that Scott was unconsciously scuffing the toe of one shoe against the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

The younger teen visibly considered Jackson from the top of his spiked hair to the tips of his designer sneakers. He even sniffed at him. He did not, of course, find anything out of place. Despite his unbecoming start to the day, Jackson had had plenty of time to collect himself. And it wasn't like Immortality had any physical side-effects.

"That's very astute," Jackson said, in response to Scott's lack of follow up. "You've become an observational genius, Sherlock." He turned to face Scott full-on. The verbal sparring felt good. It felt … normal. He hadn't had a lot of normal recently, and maybe that's why he hadn't been able to walk away when he should have.

A flush rose in Scott's cheeks. "You're not going to tell me what's really going on?" The coiled thing tensed further. Jackson knew he was pushing his luck.

He opened his mouth for another retort, to continue the volley—and Danny's advice came back to him in a rush. He forced out a long exhalation, cut his eyes down and away. "I'd say you wouldn't understand …" He had to steel himself for the next part, the admission hurting him in a way that being shot and killed repeatedly hadn't. "…but you're probably the only one who would." Why did that have to be true? Why did McCall, of all people, have to be the person who would get it? Danny was right. He needed to fix things, even if he didn't know what had gone wrong to begin with. "Look, I don't know what happened yesterday—"

"You tried to poison me!" Scott shouted, the coil releasing so abruptly that Jackson instinctively started to duck as if to avoid a real projectile. "It took me half the night to change back!"

"I _what_?" Jackson's own fragile resolve from a moment ago bowed with the accusation. How could anyone expect him to accept Scott as a teammate when he was so oppositional? So volatile? Jackson chopped the air with his hands. "I have no … _idea_ … what you're talking about!"

"Screw you. If this is what I get for agreeing to help you—"

"McCall. Scott," he interrupted, "I didn't. Do. It. Whatever it was. Do that thing—" He gestured vaguely at his head, motioning from his to Scott's like he could open a psychic channel. "—where you tell if I'm lying." Scott glared at him. Jackson could feel the vein throbbing in his temple, could feel the darkness of the building behind him, its lights dimmed and blinds pulled, signaling how little opportunity there was for a convenient interruption. Finally, Scott gave a slight nod of assent. Jackson drew a breath, using the pause to try to figure out his wording. It wasn't enough time. "All I wanted from you yesterday was your help in finding out who's been killing me before he finishes the job." A split-second after the words were out of his mouth, his brain processed them. He swore, shut his eyes against his own stupidity. Freaking verb tenses. How could he reveal so much? How could he have been so sloppy? He'd meant to answer the question with the minimal amount of truth necessary, not with all of it.

Scott gasped. "You're telling the truth." He sounded surprised. Bastard.

"No shit," Jackson snapped back. He was still cringing on the inside from what he'd said. He might never forgive himself for that lapse.

"No. You're telling the truth."

Did the words mean something different the second time they were said? "Do you repeat yourself often, McCall? Is it that hard to hang on to a thought?"

The glare was back, Scott's eyes narrowed. He gripped the handholds of his bike and leaned over the handlebars. "I'm not an idiot," he said. "Just because I-I-I don't take the bait on all your little 'jokes,' doesn't mean I don't understand th-" A gust of wind kicked across the parking lot, pushing an empty McDonald's bag and a half crushed soda can into the gutter. Scott's nostrils flared suddenly, and his diatribe broke off mid-syllable. "Jackson, go back inside," he spoke, his voice so low that Jackson almost didn't hear him.

Jackson hesitated. While they had been arguing, the parking lot had steadily emptied until only a few scattered cars marked the presence of faculty in the building or the rare student who still had an after school obligation. Scott started to walk the bike toward him, herding him away from the edge of the sidewalk and back toward the building. "Go. Inside," Scott repeated, more forcefully.

He noticed now a white Toyota Prius idling over in the driveway arc where busses discharged students in the morning. Since that was the preferred make and color of those teachers who could afford new cars, he hadn't thought anything of it until Scott's comment. Now he remembered that when he had been killed Saturday night, the driver had stepped out of a small white car.

He backed up a few steps, permitting Scott to push him toward the door. The shade from the overhang created a block of shadow on the cement. As he backed into it, he realized that he could no longer see the Prius, which meant the driver could no longer see him. He grabbed the middle of the handle bars and brought the bike and the herding to a stop. "He won't do anything here," he said. He hoped. Scott's right eyebrow quirked up, and Jackson knew that he'd just been seen through. Damn him. Danny was the only one with permission to see behind what Jackson said, and now Scott had come along and helped himself to that, too.

For some reason, that bothered Jackson more in theory. The righteous indignation he should be feeling hadn't come to the party. At least, not about this.

"This is insane," he commented, mostly to himself. Caution was one thing; being cowed by a person who drove a _Prius_ was a low he wouldn't descend to. He stepped around the bike, giving the front tire a backward kick as he did, and re-entered into the early-evening sunlight. A pink tinge had started to spread across the horizon. He'd had enough of this: of being on his guard, of being ambushed, of being the victim. Scott had finally done something useful, and now Jackson was going to give his attacker the smack down he deserved. Squaring his shoulders and donning his best swagger, he started toward the vehicle. Jackson could see only one person in the car, the driver. His head was down, body angled toward the passenger seat, focused, like he was reading something there. All Jackson could really make out about the man was a swath of dark blond hair.

The man glanced up suddenly, attention attracted maybe by a change in shadow or an out-of-place sound. His eyes landed on Jackson, who had cleared only half the distance between them. With a scramble, the man straightened in his seat, threw the car into gear, and peeled out of the driveway. As he passed, he held the palm of his hand flat up next to his face, deliberately blocking Jackson's view. Yup, that was definitely the right guy.

Jackson narrowed his eyes at the car as it swerved through the parking lot. He couldn't chase it, but he did manage to note the first few digits of the license plate. That was something else, at least. More information to work with. Now he just had to figure out how to use it. The car squealed onto the main road and was quickly subsumed in the rest of the traffic.

Pursing his lips, Jackson pondered for a moment what to do next. No immediate answer presented itself, beyond the obvious fact that he couldn't stay at the school. He'd had enough of Beacon Hills High at night to last all of his lifetimes. For lack of a better solution, he started walking toward town.

Like a lot of small town schools, when Beacon Hills High was first built, it had been placed on the edge of town. Since then, the town had made a valiant effort to come get it, mostly in the form of strip malls built up along the sides of the road. This, unfortunately, meant that a lot of places existed for someone to hide.

Jackson gripped the straps of his backpack harder and lengthened his stride. He'd never walked this route before and hadn't realized how long it actually was. He checked each car that passed for its make and model, glanced at every person wandering through a parking lot to see if they were noting him. The sun glared down on him, reflecting back off the sidewalk, the windows of the stores, the vehicles. The traffic was loud: the crunch of tires on the road, the roar of engines, the pounding beats of music that escaped from those cars with their windows down. Any footsteps behind him were masked. His breath came harder, but not from exertion. He jumped when a bird fluttered through the bushes next to him, making the branches rustle and sway.

He made it two blocks before he realized that he didn't know where to go. His own house was out, and he wasn't sure if Danny's was any safer since they lived on the same street. Lydia's and Brian's houses were out of the question because that would require explanations; he couldn't just show up at either place, especially on foot. A car backfired off to his left. He jumped, his toe catching on a crack in the sidewalk and making him stumble.

"You don't _feel_ like you used to," Scott said, rolling up next to Jackson, his sneakers already off the pedals and brushing the ground as he slowed the bike to a walk.

"Fuck, McCall. Warn a guy, will you?" Jackson snapped. He slapped his hands over his pounding heart. He'd completely forgotten that he had been talking to Scott before he went to confront his attacker. He started to chuckle, then McCall's verb choice caught up with him. "Wait. What?" he asked. What did he mean _feel_?

Scott lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. "I can't explain it," he replied. "There's just something different about you, like … electricity?" He shrugged again, apparently unhappy with the inadequacy of his explanation. But Jackson got it, the understanding bitter in his mouth. Scott must be able to feel the Quickening. This was getting more complicated by the second. He'd gotten the werewolf involved, thinking it would be a quick solution—one with the added benefit of letting him notify Scott that their playing field had been leveled—and now his own secrets were unraveling. And somehow Scott still had the advantage. The younger boy's face was screwed up in contemplation. "How did it happen?"

"Natural talent," he responded, perhaps quicker than he should have. He could feel his newfound power slipping away, and that was making him ornery. How could he have any leverage if Scott knew everything? Worse, if Scott knew it before he had been told?

"It's too recent," Scott argued. "Something happened to change you…but you're not a werewolf." He was inspecting Jackson again, as if a maker's mark or a cheat code was going to appear on the older boy and explain everything if just the right amount of scrutiny was used. A shiver ran down Jackson's spine.

Jackson shrugged, as if the explanation wasn't worth bothering with. "Surprise," he stated. The word came out flat, not sarcastic like he had planned. A truck rushed past on the street, the gust of air in its wake buffeting the boys. Jackson glanced over automatically, checking the surrounding cars. All clear. So far.

"You can't get hurt anymore," Scott continued. "No," he corrected, before Jackson could figure out what to say. "You just heal quickly. Like me." He mulled that over for a second, one eye squeezed closed as if to help him think. "And … someone's trying to hurt you because of that? But not hunters because they're not finishing the job. For fun?" He glanced sideways at Jackson, seeking confirmation.

"It's as good an explanation as any," Jackson conceded. And now that the possibility was out there, maybe Scott was right. The repeated killings possibly weren't a test, or weren't attempts to permanently kill at all. Maybe the shooter was just having a sick, twisted kind of fun. Maybe he just wanted to see how badly he could scare Jackson.

(Maybe it was working).

Jackson rubbed the back of his neck, mostly for something to do with his hands. His thoughts were buzzing again as he tried to work the pieces of what he knew into the new paradigm. The two boys had dropped into silence, their trudging feet on the cement the only noise between them. With any luck, Scott thought Jackson was merely being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious, not because he was withholding details. "You need to get someplace safe," he stated, after they'd cleared another half block.

Jackson turned his hands up, part supplication, part invitation. "Where do you suggest? I can't go home. He knows where I live." His tone was too close to begging for his own comfort.

"I wouldn't take you there anyway. It's too far away. _And who the hell plants wolfsbane in their front yards_?" The question seemed more incredulous than angry.

Wolfsbane? Front yard? Why was Scott …? His eyes went wide with understanding. No wonder Scott had been so pissed. The yellow and blue flowers that decorated the Whittemore's yard, they were wolfsbane? When he'd skimmed that Wikipedia article, he'd noted that besides their reputed anti-werewolf powers, aconite was also a hardy garden plant. It had been a curious fact then, but not a relevant one so he hadn't thought about it since. He didn't know what wolfsbane did to werewolves, exactly. He hadn't paid that much attention to the article once he'd discovered its connection to werewolves and made the logical connection between his own injuries and Scott's secret. But, based on what Scott had said, the plant's effects were nasty. "I didn't know," he offered. It wasn't an apology, but it was as close as he was willing to get. He _hadn't_ known; he did now. That might turn out to be useful information someday. "I swear I didn't know," he repeated.

A long second passed, and Scott seemed to accept it. He gnawed his lip, scuffed a shoe against the sidewalk, apparently wrestling with a decision. Finally, he said, "We'll go to my place. It's not far, and my mom can drive you home when she gets home from work."

As far as offers went, it was one he never thought he'd receive and absolutely one he never thought he'd be grateful to accept.


	6. Chapter 6

"You want to see for yourself," Jackson said. Scott had been eyeing him as they walked, in that not-so-subtle way he had where every thought played out in quirks of his eyebrows and the press of his mouth. He really spent too much time around Stilinski. Jackson sighed. Scott needed proof of what he'd figured out. He got that. No matter how many times he witnessed his own body healing, it still amazed him. He lived with it, took it for granted, and still couldn't quite believe it.

Scott's nod was almost shy, like he knew he was imposing but was too curious not to. The quip Jackson would have made, even just two days before, questioning whether his teammate owned a spine died before it hit his lips. Scott was walking the bicycle now, one hand on the seat, the other on the hand grip. The two boys had left the main boulevard several blocks back and were now heading through a residential district Jackson could swear he hadn't known existed in Beacon Hills. The houses were big, but also old, with a tendency toward missing shingles, badly weathered siding, and overgrown or half-dead yards. Bicycles and faded plastic children's toys dotted front lawns like they'd been abandoned in an invasion. He couldn't imagine how people could live here, how people could choose to live like this. Didn't they have any pride in their homes? Weren't they ashamed to present this carelessness as their public face to the neighbors? Though never one to practice much tact, he kept these observations to himself. With as many other concerns as tumbled around his mind right now, giving voice to his critiques of the houses and their inhabitants would sound too much like whining, and he didn't whine.

On the plus side, the area was quiet. Little traffic ran through this cluster of side-streets, probably because they didn't lead anywhere. Jackson came to a stop near a corner. An overgrown hedge blocked the street from the any casual observers inside the house and destroyed any sight lines for drivers backing out of the driveway. The corner must have a lot of fender-benders. He patted at his pockets, searching for anything he could use for a visual demonstration. The best way would involve cutting himself: a sliver of pain, the wound would heal, and Scott would get the proof he needed. He found his wallet and a handful of loose change, neither of which would help. His phone was still gone, but that also would have been useless unless it had suddenly developed a switch-blade app that did more than draw an incisive picture.

"Will this help?" Scott asked. He held up a hand, and the blunt, chipped fingernails elongated into thick, sharp points. Jackson stared at the claw in front of him; he'd never really seen that part of Scott's transformation before. He'd certainly felt those claws. The memory of them digging into his shoulders the day before made him wince. But the times when he'd seen Scott in his wolf visage, he'd only been looking at the eyes and teeth.

His throat went dry. He nodded, held out his arm and started rolling up the sleeve. He was not going to sacrifice another shirt, even if it wasn't one of his favorites.

"Does it matter where?" Scott asked. The claws were hovering over his arm, and for a second Jackson visualized them sweeping up and around and slicing through his neck. Nails that solid, with as much strength behind them as he knew his co-captain could muster, would work as well as any sword. He might be Immortal, but Scott still had the ability to kill him.

"N-" The sound stuck in his mouth. He wet his lips and tried again. "No."

Scott took a breath, eyed Jackson for a last-second pulling away, a "Ha-ha, joke's over" that Jackson really wanted to be able to provide, but he was in far too deep for now. The claws came down in the meat right under his elbow. He hissed when they broke the skin, swallowed back a much louder yell as they started to move. He would heal so quickly and thoroughly that in five minutes, no one would believe that there'd been an injury. But Immortality did nothing to dull the pain. His knees started to tremble from the effort of standing still. His teeth were clenched so hard that he could hear them grinding.

Blood welled up in the scratches. Scott's irises melted into gold; an ecstatic shudder ran down his body, a soft moan escaping from his mouth. The next thing Jackson knew, he was stumbling over the curb and into the street, reeling from the force of Scott's shove. He saw Scott disappear around the corner of the hedge, heard him start retching into the grass. He looked down at his arm, at the three-inch long parallel gouges in the skin. They were so deep that he caught a glimpse of what had to be bone. Sparks began to play along the edges of the wounds. The muscle and skin knit back together, reabsorbing much of the blood that had pooled on his arm.

He never heard the shot that took him down.

When Jackson awoke, he nearly fell out of the porch swing in which he'd been awkwardly propped. His shirt was gone and goosebumps dotted his skin from a slight chill in the spring air. Scott was sitting on the top of the porch steps. On hearing Jackson's resurrection gasp, he'd bolted upright. He turned his head slowly, as if afraid of what he was going to see. "Oh, thank god," he breathed out. "For awhile there…" He let the sentence hang. Jackson couldn't blame him. For however long Jackson had been dead, Scott had been left on tenterhooks about whether his story could be believed. Jackson couldn't imagine how agonizing those minutes must have been.

All he could muster was a weak smile. His chest still ached from a now recognizable injury. What had his life come to that he was now on intimate terms with the sensation of bullets tearing through his body? He sat up, the swing swaying with the movement. The chains creaked. The wooden floorboards that made up the porch had started to buckle in a couple places, and a tall weed of some kind of thistle was nosing its way through one of the gaps. Funny how he noticed those kinds of details after he came back from the dead.

"It's my house," Scott answered, in response to the question Jackson hadn't yet reacquired the mental acuity to ask. "Your shirt is in the garbage. I can lend you one, if you want. Your, uh, attacker is over there." Jackson followed where Scott was pointing. A man he'd never seen before was tied to the tree in yard with—Jackson squinted at what bound the man—yes, that was Scott's bike lock wrapped around his chest. A pair of handcuffs held the man's wrists together. Trust Scott to have extra handcuffs laying around his house. He dimly recalled Stiles making a comment about handcuffing Scott to the radiator and felt a cold tingle run down his spine. It had been so easy to downplay the negatives of beng a werewolf when he thought he still had a chance to gaining the positives. Now the negatives stood out so much stronger. "If my bike gets stolen," Scott added, interrupting the tangent Jackson's thoughts had run down, "You're buying me a new one."

Jackson nodded. That seemed fair enough. He tried to stand up, but fell back into the swing with an "umph," his coordination and balance still off. The negatives of his own condition were also becoming more apparent. The list of answers he needed to get from his mentor got longer by the moment. Right now, he wanted some clarification on the whole resurrection thing: starting with its variances in how long it took, and progressing from there into an explanation for why he could sometimes leap straight to his feet and start running, and others he could barely get his arms to work together well enough to touch his feet.

The man must have seen Jackson wake up. He started to thrash against the tree, trying to free himself. Though sitting, he looked to have a couple inches on Jackson, though his lankiness made him appear even taller. He had shaggy dirty blond hair piled over a face that only saw thirty in photographs. He wore disheveled khakis and a red Polo shirt. "You can't do this!" he shouted. "You can't do this to me."

"We can't?" Jackson mouthed, surprised because clearly they had "done this." Well, Scott had anyway. And did that mean that Scott had chased a car on his behalf? (Was it worth the joke to ask?)

Scott shrugged. "I did what I could. He got me pretty good with his fingernails." He pushed the sleeves of his shirts up and inspected his forearms as is to show off the extent of his sacrifice. The wounds had, of course, healed. The effect was lost without evidence, so he switched in mid-gesture and planted his elbows on his knees, dangling his hands in the spread of space between them.

"Did he tell you anything?" Jackson asked.

"Nah," Scott replied. "He kinda won't talk to me at all. I think I scared him." He didn't appear upset about that. If anything, he seemed bemused. "Oh—" Reaching into his pocket, Scott pulled out a collection of small vials. They were a clear plastic capped with a blue plastic lid. Two were empty; one was filled with a dark red viscous fluid. Jackson had seen vials exactly like that when he went to the hospital for his annual sport's physical. "I found this on him." He made as if to toss the filled vial to Jackson, then closed his hand around it and pulled it back as if he'd realized that Jackson may not be able to catch anything yet.

"Is that mine?" He managed to get his legs under him and working sufficiently for him to get off the swing and over to the steps next to Scott where he sat back down in what amounted to being a controlled fall. Scott held the vial back out for him to see. Jackson didn't try to take it. He looked over the man who had ceased his thrashing and had switched to glaring with a hatred that made Jackson really grateful that heat vision only existed in comic books. He frowned. It did, right? He glanced over at the werewolf sitting next to him, remembered why he was sitting here at all, and decided that maybe some of his opinions needed revision. Later.

"Yes," Scott responded.

Jackson scowled. "He's taking my blood." He thought about that. It continued to not make sense. "He's killing me and stealing my blood." A little more dramatic, a lot more accurate—but still didn't make any sense. The more he thought about it, the angrier he grew, and not just because of the lost shirts and inconveniences of dying. The surge of adrenaline from his anger snapped his body back to full function. Pushing to his feet, he stomped down the stairs and across the yard. The man cowered as Jackson approached, scrabbling at the ground with his feet as if trying to run away, despite being chained to the tree. The grass tore as he kicked, lengthening the tracks he had already worn into the ground.

Crossing the yard was the easy part. But, when he got to the man and was standing over him, his shadow darkening the man's face, he opened his mouth and found nothing articulate waiting. A stream of invectives raced through his head, but he knew that letting them spill out would only show him as weak. He'd had enough of being this man's victim.

"Look at you," the man said, eyeing Jackson up and down as if he needed to model his own advice. He teeth were yellowed with coffee stains and his nose had the pinched look of someone who habitually wore glasses, though he wasn't now. "All that potential and you squander it. How many decades have you wasted in _high school_?" He left the question open like he expected an answer, but Jackson wasn't sure what to say. Decades? How old did this guy think he was?

"You're a monster," the man hissed. As he turned his hands to pull against the cuffs, a flash of blue ink on his wrist caught Jackson's eye. It looked like the top of a tattoo, though Jackson couldn't see much of it between the handcuffs and the end of the shirt sleeve. What Jackson couldn't miss, though, was the fact that the wounds weren't healing. Any doubts he might have had were gone now. This man was not like him.

Jackson raised an eyebrow at the accusation, now spurned to comment. "He's the monster," he replied, gesturing with his thumb toward Scott who still sat on the porch stairs.

"It's true," Scott called back. His answer only emphasized the fact since he was just too far away to have overhead the conversation had he been a mere human. He sounded blasé about the admission. Jackson could mentally picture the younger boy twisting his lips into a wry smile and shrugging in that pseudo-shy way he had as if he'd been called on for being a procrastinator or a bit lazy.

The man snarled, but fortunately not the way Scott did. He locked his gaze on Jackson, as if deliberately trying to deny Scott's existence. Then, abruptly, he went still. A calmness settled over his features, a resignation. He gusted out a long breath and shut his eyes for a longer moment as if forcing himself to make peace with an unpleasant reality. Jackson had seen expressions like that before, but only in movies. It was the look of a solider about to volunteer for execution in order to save his squad. Before Jackson had a chance to probe further, to try to trick the man into revealing whatever it was he'd just decided to take to his grave, the man spoke again. His words were tired, defeated. "I tried. I tried to stay out, to not interfere, but watching you, watching how you wasted your gifts… If you're not going to use them, let me have 'em." He tipped his head down and looked up at Jackson through his eyelashes, like a child begging for another cookie.

It clicked, then, in Jackson's head, making sense in a twisted way. The attacks, the deaths. The vials. The guy was taking Jackson's blood because he wanted to become Immortal. Was that even possible? Bile rose in his throat at the realization that the man was probably _drinking _the blood. He blanched, swore under his breath.

Jackson wanted nothing more than to punch the guy's face in. He felt his fingers balling into a fist, his arm tensing to be pulled back. He brought a tight fist up, knocked uselessly at the air—then shoved it back down. Hitting his attacker might feel good (Who was he kidding? It would feel perfect.), but it would only make more problems. He wasn't certain that if he threw the punch he was desperate to throw, he'd be able to stop with one. By standing around being threatening, he'd gotten most of his questions answered. His silence had garnered more information than all the "Who the fuck do you think you are?"s that he had really wanted to ask. But, now what? Was he supposed to let the guy go? Was he supposed to kill him? What if he did kill him? What if he let him go?

He had to get away before he did something he'd regret. Before he could start cataloging the list of what he wanted to do, of what he could do- before he allowed himself to think about any of the possibilities long enough that he might convince himself that just one would be OK, he spun on his heel and stalked back to the porch.


	7. Chapter 7

The three of them sat in tense silence for a long time, Jackson struggling to figure out his next move. Nothing in his life had given him the experience to deal with this. It was that simple. No lesson, tutor, training, or book gave him a baseline for what to do with the man in front of him. And it made him feel sick, made his throat burn and the muscles in his jaw feel like they were seizing.

"Let me go," the man called across the yard. He sat up as straight at the bike lock around his chest allowed. His previous struggles against it had caused it to slip down on one side so that it cut diagonally across his body and forced him into a strange contortion against the tree. "I know things," he continued. "I can tell you things. We could work together!"

_Work together_? Jackson thought. He snorted, shot a quick glance at Scott to see what his reaction to the offer was. Scott had his eyes closed and his face look strained, though Jackson couldn't imagine what would be causing that now. What excellent timing on not paying attention. "He's kidding, right?" Jackson scoffed, hoping to prompt a response. "He's gotta be fucking kidding."

Scott dipped his head once in a shallow nod, a mere acknowledgment that speaking had occurred. He wasn't listening to Jackson. What was he listening to? His head was tilted a little to one side and he was gripping his legs as if to keep them from running off on their own.

Jackson worked his jaw, trying to release some of the tension before it spread up into his head. It didn't help. "Got any brilliant ideas?" Jackson asked, not anticipating any answer, much less a good one. He could only expect so much, and Scott had already accomplished more than he'd hoped for when he'd first approached him at school. Now, more than ever, he wished he had his phone, wished he had argued with Finstock, or had snuck into the classroom after practice and stolen it back, or had even bothered to tell his parents about its confiscation so they could have called in their permission for its release. He squirmed, tried to hide it. The wooden plank of the porch stairs was an uncomfortable seat. The rough bumps and ridges of the chipped and weather worn paint rubbed through the thin layer of fabric between it and his body.

He leaned forward, bracing his forearms across his knees. At some point, he'd taken the vial of his blood from Scott and was now turning it over in his hand, the vial just visible at the bottom of his field of vision. The blood inside pooled from one end to the other under his ministrations. The man was waiting with an expectant look, like he thought he'd offered Jackson an enticing bribe. "You?" Jackson asked him. "Who are _you_?" He put as much contempt into the questions as he could, knowing that their meaning would be crystal clear even though he hadn't spoken loudly enough for the man to hear the exact words. That kind of contempt was hard not to understand. He didn't know who the man was, and he didn't care. Not about the particulars, anyway. After everything the man had done, to think that he had any _chance_ of being worth Jackson's consideration was pure hubris.

The message got through. The man's face went red with anger and he started to sputter. He kicked once more at the ground as if this one would accomplish what all the previous efforts hadn't. Jackson allowed himself a chuckle. It was dark and mirthless, but it still counted. He watched the man slump back against the tree and shut his eyes. He looked like a condemned man who knew that he'd run out of appeals. Jackson could almost convince himself that he'd never had anything to be afraid of.

"I'm not going to kill him for you," Scott spoke, breaking into Jackson's thoughts. He sounded like he was talking in his sleep, like he was completely unaware of the words coming from his mouth.

Jackson's eyebrows shot up and he turned his head slowly to assess the younger boy, to assess the person who could make that statement as if it needed to be said. Scott hadn't changed positions, though Jackson caught the tremble in his shoulders. Killing the man had been an idle thought, the kind of solution a bad movie might use, which was the only reason it had bubbled into his head at all. Jackson understood that he would have to kill, even if he didn't fully understand what that meant; eventually someone would come for his head and he'd have to take theirs first. He would, too. Jackson was going to play The Game, and he was going to win it. He wasn't going to start by becoming a common murder.

He'd rather been hoping that the problem would solve itself. Somehow. That the man would have a heart attack or, better yet, would blink out of existence. Isn't this where his mentor was supposed to show up and teach him some kind of important lesson? He scanned up and down the residential street with its overgrown trees that wept leaves and twigs across everything. What he could see of it from this vantage remained stubbornly free of last minute resolution.

"We should call the police," Scott continued. "Sheriff Stilinksi will know what to do with him."

Jackson pursed his lips in surprise at the suggestion. "Stiles's dad?"

"_Yes_, Stiles's dad." Scott's eyes popped open and his attention was back with a snap to the yard and the problems it contained.

"Are you insane? We can't call the police," Jackson retorted. "How … I mean … _what_-?"

"We have to do something, you idiot," Scott shot back. He jumped to his feet, skipping right down the steps to pace on the worn cobblestones at the bottom. "My mom's going to be finishing her shift soon." He yanked his phone out of his pocket, glanced at the display as if to confirm what he already knew, and then at the horizon where the sun had just about finished setting, leaving only a pale band of orange at the edge of the sky.

"Because having the police at your house is going to be _so_ much easier to explain?"

Scott stilled, his head pulling back in surprise. "Seriously?" The question dripped with incredulousness. "Yes, it's going to be easier to explain. _Anything_ is going to be easier to explain. If a dinosaur showed up and stepped on him, _that_ would be easier to explain."

Jackson snorted again and shook his head. Call the police. His last encounter with them, after he found the dead guy at the video store, had left him thoroughly unimpressed with their capabilities. With all the resources at their disposal, _they _still hadn't figured out about the werewolves in this town. They swept in to all the murders and "animal" attacks and took over, acting like they knew what was going on, and … Jackson passed a hand over his face as the realization came to him. Calling the police might actually be the right answer. A mundane solution might keep people from prying into the problem too deeply. He licked his lips. One thing he had to make sure of, just in case: "Can he be trusted?"

"He's Stiles's _dad_," Scott answered. He sounded offended.

"And Stiles isn't exactly known for being able to keep his mouth shut."

Scott's eyes blazed at that, his lip curling up. Jackson raised his hands defensively and scooted farther back on into the confines of the porch, as far from Scott as he could get without leaving his position. Not that the couple of inches would matter if Scott attacked. He'd already had ample evidence of that.

"Look, we don't have to tell him anything," Scott continued. The light faded out of his eyes, leaving them looking tired and heavy. The worry in them was obvious. Scott ticked his head toward the man as he added, "He had a gun in his car. All we have to say is that he was stalking and threatening you. Your parents are rich…"

Jackson was nodding before Scott finished the explanation. That could work. He hadn't needed all that much to be convinced. Unbalanced guy going after someone like Jackson. The story had all kinds of holes in it—not the least of which was how exactly someone stalking Jackson had ended up chained to a tree in Scott's front yard—but at least it was more believable than the truth. No one would question how he got mixed up in the events, what this meant for his future, what kind of person he was. He glanced down at the vial that he held in the curl of his thumb, then shoved it into the pocket of his jeans, out of sight. He would conveniently fail to mention that part of the story. He thought briefly about dropping the evidence through the slats on the porch, then decided not to risk it. That was the kind of sloppiness, of not tying up loose ends, that always came back to haunt people.

Scott reached down suddenly, grabbed the hem of his shirt, and started to pull it up over his head. The layers stuck to each other, making the bottom shirt ride up as Scott wiggled his arms out of the sleeves of the over shirt.

"What are you doing?" Jackson demanded, horrified. He'd had people get undressed in front of him before, but never like this, never without reason. He really hoped this wasn't some new wrinkle in the werewolf thing. There weren't, like, surprise full moons or werewolf-transformation drills, were there? Or was this another side-effect of the wolfsbane?

"You need a shirt," Scott answered reasonably, his voice muffled through the fabric in front of his face.

Jackson hugged his arms over his naked chest, his attention once more drawn to it. He'd managed to forget about his lack of clothing in everything else that was going on. But it was still warm enough out that he didn't need a shirt. "I'm fine," he said.

"Do you want to explain to the Sheriff where your other shirt went?"

"I said I'm fine, McCall," Jackson snapped.

"You're half naked!" Scott shouted. The shirt popped free of Scott's head. His hair was left mussed, making him look and sound more wild than usual. He threw the wadded bundle at Jackson. It landed on his knees, still warm from Scott's body. Jackson had to fight the urge to slap it like it was an errant insect, to flick it off his body before it could sting him. The dark blue cloth looked so thin and the stitching around the collar was starting to pull out.

"I'm not wearing one of your shirts!" Jackson shouted back, cutting to the heart of the issue. "I'd rather be dead."

Scott huffed, squeezed his eyes shut, and pulled a face. A beat passed with Jackson waiting for another volley, but Scott clammed up like he'd been punched in the gut. Then, "Really?" Scott choked out. "You haven't had enough of that?"

Jackson felt a grin spread across his face at the realization of what he'd said. Come to think of it, he had had enough of being dead. He nudged at the shirt, reluctant to pick it up in case it fell apart or melted or whatever happened to clothes made of inorganic compounds. Unfortunately, Scott was right. His story would hold up a lot better if he didn't have to explain away his missing shirt, speaking of tying up loose ends.

Before he could finish stealing himself to don it, the man called out again, "I know things. I'll tell everything."

Both boys turned to looked at him, as if unaware that he still factored into what was going on in more than an abstract way. Truth be told, Jackson had already dismissed him, and was surprised that the man had decided to speak at all.

The man narrowed his eyes and held his hands up, sleeves riding up with the movement. He turned his wrists out as if that should mean something. The skin was raw and torn, marring the blue lines of the tattoo. "I'll tell them _everything_," he repeated. The threat was obvious, even if it lacked conviction. He couldn't have helped but overheard the discussion about calling the police, which naturally meant that he had to at least try to blackmail his way out of this. Too bad he didn't have anything Jackson wanted.

"Shut up," Jackson responded.

The man took a breath, squaring his gaze on Jackson, then hissed, "I know you, Methos." A smirk spread across his face. He obviously thought he'd played the trump card. Self-satisfaction oozed off of him.

"What?" Scott asked, looking back at Jackson.

Jackson could only shrug. "You got me." He wrinkled his nose at the shirt, then decided to just suck it up and deal with it. He pulled it over his head. It fit okay, if a little loosely around the shoulders. And he only had to wear it until he could get home to his own wardrobe. "Fine. Call them. We'll play this your way. Follow my lead on the story." Scott hesitated for a breath, struggling with the potential repercussions of this agreement. Finally he nodded and stepped off to the side with his phone, fingers already scrolling for the right number. It figured that he'd have the police department programmed into his call list.

While he waited for the next act to begin, Jackson strolled back to the man. He came to a stop directly over him so that Jackson's legs were all the man could see without craning his head back as far as he could. "You," he directed, looking down into the man's turned up face. He heard a hiss of indrawn breath and imagined that he too could hear the man's heart pattering away. "You can tell them anything you want. Anything you say will only make me look better." He allowed a small, confident grin to pass over his lips, an indulgence he couldn't resist. "I don't know who you thought you were dealing with, but you should have known better than to come after me. You were only gonna lose."

END

_Notes for those unfamiliar with _Highlander _canon:_

Methos is the name of the oldest Immortal still alive. He is over 5,000 years old, doesn't remember ever being mortal (so he claims), and is often dismissed as a myth, even by other Immortals.

The tattoo on the man's wrist belongs to an organization called The Watchers. They're a secret society of humans charged with the task of observing and recording the lives of the Immortals, but never interfering. Immortals aren't supposed to know about the Watchers, though many do.

A splinter group of Watchers disagrees with the non-interference policy. They believe that The Game needs directing and it's their job to direct it by deciding who gets to continue playing.


End file.
